The hunger began as a dull ache in Kael's marrow.
It wasn't the familiar, hollow gnawing of an empty stomach—he'd lived with that since the day he was born—but something deeper, more invasive. It felt as if his very skeleton were being slowly drained, a cold vacuum pulling at his joints and the base of his skull.
He sat on the damp stone floor, his back against a rusted pipe that vibrated with the rhythmic pulse of the sewer's waste. Elara was across from him, her face illuminated by the dying violet light of a chem-stick. She was sorting through the meager remains of his scavenging kit, her expression grim.
"You're shaking," she noted without looking up.
Kael looked at his hands. They were trembling, the silvery scars where the needles had erupted now pulsing with a faint, rhythmic ache. "I'm... I'm starving. But not for food. It's like there's a hole in my chest."
[WARNING: ESSENCE DEFICIT DETECTED]
[Orchard Status: Malnourished.]
[Current Reserve: 0.0 Units.]
[Host Stamina Degrading: 0.5% per hour to maintain graft integrity.]
The clinical voice in his head was a relentless drumbeat.
"The Orchard isn't a gift, Kael," Elara said, finally setting down a useless, bent harvesting tool. "It's a farm. And like any farm, if you don't feed the soil, the crops start eating each other. Or in your case, they start eating you."
She stood up, her shadow dancing across the vaulted ceiling. "In the Sprawl, Essence isn't just what makes you strong. It's what keeps you human. Every mutation, every graft, every modified cell requires a constant drip of amber to stop from decaying into Feral rot. Most people scavenge just enough to stay ahead of the hunger. But you? You have a high-grade, parasitic system anchored to an Inert host. Your 'burn rate' is three times higher than a standard Ironbark grunt."
Kael leaned his head back against the pipe, closing his eyes. He could see the mental orchard again—the single plot of grey, dust-dry soil. The 'Acid Spit' sapling looked wilted, its yellow pulse sluggish and dim.
"We have zero Essence," he whispered. "And now there's a bounty on my head. Nobody's going to trade with us."
"We aren't going to trade," Elara said, her voice hard. "We're going to harvest. The Sprawl is full of Essence—it's just trapped in things that want to kill you. Rust-River feral-scrappers, Glass-Thorn bushes, those ridiculous Ironbark patrols... it's all just walking, talking currency."
She walked over to him, her eyes searching his. "The seizure was a warning. If you reach zero biological integrity, the Orchard will perform a final 'Harvest' of its own. It will consume your organs to preserve the Origin Seed."
[SYSTEM VERIFICATION: STATEMENT ACCURATE]
[Host Termination Protocol: Initialized at < 1% DNA Stability.]
Kael felt a cold shiver that had nothing to do with the damp sewer air. He wasn't just a fugitive; he was a walking battery that was rapidly running out of charge.
"Phase Two isn't about running, Kael," Elara said, offering him a hand to help him up. "It's about hunting. We need a thousand units just to unlock that second plot and stabilize your burn rate. And we need them before the week is out."
Kael took her hand, his legs still shaky but the desperation in his chest giving him a new, sharp kind of clarity. He looked at his hands—the 'Inert' hands that had never held power until a week ago.
"Where do we start?"
Elara looked toward the dark tunnel that led toward the Rust-River—a sector of the undercity where the flora was as aggressive as the predators.
"We hunt the feral things that Jax is too afraid to touch," she said. "We need to hunt. Now. Before the Orchard starts eating the rest of you."